James Bond wouldn’t have a job without intelligence.
And no, I’m not referring to 007’s ability to think on his feet. Before Mr. Bond gears up for his next mission, the world’s greatest superspy needs something far more important than a slick tux or a shaken martini. In his world, information about his targets is indispensable.
Imagine Mr. Bond busting down the doors of a villainous volcano hideout, except he doesn’t know who the bad guy is or what he and his henchmen are up to. It’d be a pretty short movie with no real story. Not to mention, he might not make it out alive.
Intelligence goes beyond its application in espionage and politics. To win over more customers, businesses must collect ample data to understand the market and recognize fresh opportunities.
Let’s uncover the core fundamentals of competitive intelligence, the reasons why businesses should embrace it, and the best competitive intelligence (CI) software available.
Competitive intelligence is the process of gathering, analyzing, and using information about a company's competitors, market, and industry to make better business decisions. It involves researching and monitoring the activities and strategies of competitors to gain a competitive advantage and improve a company's market position.
The concept of competitive intelligence isn’t entirely new. For as long as people have been selling goods and services, competition has been a fundamental component of a business. You can’t succeed without awareness and understanding of your competitive landscape.
The more data and information (or intelligence) you have, the more likely you are to craft a winning business strategy. Again, this isn’t a groundbreaking idea.
The difference now is that competitive intelligence in marketing has become a formal business practice that companies rely on to compile comprehensive data about their competitors to improve strategic decision-making.
As competitive intelligence evolves, sales and marketing leaders have a few reasons for adopting this business practice. Let’s look at several universal goals companies attempt to achieve by investing in competitive intelligence.
No business is immune from the threat of competition. Companies must explore ways to make better, more informed decisions to develop effective strategies and maintain a competitive edge.
As this method progresses, how a company approaches gathering and actioning competitive intelligence varies from organization to organization. But the three core applications of competitive intelligence below paint a picture of what it looks like from the perspective of a reputable business-to-business (B2B) software company.
1. Win/loss: CI provides a foundation for competitive analysis associated with the customer buying process. This enables sales and marketing teams to identify consumer perception across multiple brands and competitors.
Many companies are cautious about placing so much emphasis on their competition. Just a few years ago, it wasn’t uncommon for sage investors and business thought leaders to advise against focusing on competitors.
However, the explosion of technological innovation over the last several decades paved the way for a more formal approach to competitive intelligence. Consider that before the boom of Martech software in the early to mid-2000s, there wasn’t a whole lot of publicly available information organizations could collect outside of marketing materials and insider knowledge.
Suggested reading: To explore the history and evolution of competitive intelligence, check out this interview with industry expert Andy McCotter-Bicknell.
The rise of competitive intelligence is partly due to the broader adoption of another novel concept in business: product marketing.
Product marketers are often the most common competitive intelligence practitioners because companies seek out candidates with experience in this area. Product marketing teams are exploring a more rigorous and defined approach by developing formal competitive intelligence programs with dedicated specialists and analysts.
More often, competitive intelligence falls on multiple teams and stakeholders rather than a focused, designated department. This may change in the coming years as more organizations are likely to allocate more resources to formal competitive intelligence programs.
Defining the different types of competitive intelligence can be subjective. Technically, any information you gather about competitors qualifies. However, it all comes down to how you intend to use that information and turn it into meaningful actions.
Once you’ve decided that your company could benefit from a formal approach, give some serious thought before crafting a competitive intelligence strategy. You have to factor in a lot of nuances and complex ideas, so here’s a step-by-step process to serve as a guiding foundation.
Just like any deliberate and comprehensive strategy, defining goals and objectives is a tried and true starting point. This focuses your efforts and ensures that you’re collecting the right information. Try to take things a step further and think about how your efforts will impact mission-critical key performance indicators (KPIs).
You should care most about your direct competitors. Fight the urge to narrow it down to one or two of your primary competitors and commit to understanding the full landscape. For example, let’s say you have two direct competitors that pose the biggest challenges. While the newcomers aren’t a threat as of yet, you still need to include them in your analysis.
It’s also worth spending time identifying indirect competitors. While they may not appear in your rearview quite yet, there are still insights you can glean. You’ll be better positioned to defend yourself if they become a direct competitor and maintain market share (think: the iPhone eventually becoming a killer for Kodak’s film business).
You can use a variety of data sources to gather information about your competitors, including publicly available information, industry reports, news articles, and customer feedback.
You can also use tools like Google Alerts to monitor the web for news and information about your competitors. Make sure to go back to the previous section for more inspiration and examples of the different types of competitive intelligence data worth collecting.
Once you know which types of data you want to examine, create a logical process to evaluate this data. Look for patterns and trends in the data and try to identify any opportunities or threats that could affect your marketing or sales strategies. When forming analyses, contextualize what kind of impact this information will have and if there’s a need to prescribe actions in response.
Getting to this point means you have a ton of valuable insights, and you’re ready to share them with relevant stakeholders. The challenge here is to demonstrate not just the “what” of the data but the “why” behind your recommendations and next steps. This guarantees leadership and executive buy-in and keeps everyone involved.
Lather, rinse, repeat. You should treat competitive intelligence as an ongoing endeavor, not a one-and-done tactic. Your competitors are also keeping tabs on you, so make sure you’re monitoring them regularly to keep yourself armed with the latest insights.
With a better sense of the fundamentals and a few tips to utilize competitor data for strategic planning, let’s explore some competitive intelligence best practices to keep in your back pocket.
You need to get your hands on more advanced competitive intelligence tools and software to help get the job done as you go further and invest more effort. A competitive intelligence software tool must be able to do the following to be included on G2’s list:
*Below are the top five leading competitive intelligence software solutions from G2’s Winter 2023 Grid® Report. Some reviews may be edited for clarity.*
Semrush is a leading digital marketing software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform that helps with online visibility management. With over 55 products, tools, and add-ons, some of the more notable uses apply to search, content, social media, and market research.
“The Topic Research section in Semrush is very useful for creating new content strategies. It discovers trending content topics in your industry, reveals topics that your competitors rank for, and generates ideas for your own content. It will help you to beat your competitors more efficiently.”
- Semrush Review, Ambar Y.
“Honestly, its biggest drawback is the price. It's costly even compared to similar products. A lot of companies may not have the budget for such a tool.”
- Semrush Review, Chris C.
Similarweb consumers use its software to compare digital marketing performance and get insights into their competitors’ marketing strategies. Similarweb uncovers fresh opportunities, informs decision-making, and highlights potential competitive threats.
“The most helpful and valued features of our Similarweb subscription include comprehensive analytics, real-time competitor insights, superb customer support, and the user-friendly dashboards. The best part about Similarweb is the practical insights you get on SEO, browsing behavior/performance, industry, and competitor trends – absolutely priceless insight in the age of digital-first!”
- Similarweb Review, Jekaterina R.
“Occasionally, the logic behind calculation of aspects such as pay-per-click, spend for yourself, and competitors is not clear. If your known spend isn't accurate, it's doubtful if it’s accurate for your competitors.”
- Similarweb Review, Martin H.
Klue helps product marketers and competitive intelligence professionals collect, curate, and deliver actionable competitor insights through its AI-powered competitive intelligence platform. This software also gets more wins for sales by bringing together external competitive intel and internal knowledge from your team in the field.
“Klue provides a real-time data feed for companies that users identify as being competitive in their space, allowing users to stay ‘in the know’ about any and all activity associated with that competitor. As such, it saves users from having to manually search for competitive intelligence on their own, which is a great time saver. Also, the customer service is top notch.”
- Klue Review, Danielle Z.
“Klue takes some work to get used to. There's definitely a learning curve for how battlecards are best organized, created, and completed. The other challenge is getting folks to buy into the product – convincing them to use the integrations and to store their CI here instead of who knows where else is a major challenge.”
- Klue Review, Raina H.
Crayon is a competitive intelligence platform that organizations use to identify and capitalize on opportunities to create a sustainable business advantage. Crayon’s software automatically captures and analyzes competitive intel by pulling from hundreds of millions of sources.
“I like that we define our landscape as we see it. We can get really granular on articles the platform feeds to us based on saved searches, and the board-building is very intuitive with an easy-to-read format for the information consumer. I also like how easy it is to integrate with our other internal systems, especially Slack.”
- Crayon Review, Trevor J.
“I wish the battlecard builder tool had more creative functionality. Also, the tool is very buggy, such as when it should perform like a basic text editor, it does really strange things that can be very frustrating and eat up time.”
- Crayon Review, Kerri P.
Brandwatch Consumer Intelligence is a consumer intelligence solution from Brandwatch that AI-enriched data from over 100m social and online sources. This software helps data-driven organizations better understand how consumers feel about their brands, products, and industry trends.
“Brandwatch is easy to use and extremely valuable in terms of exploring and uncovering social insights. The platform crosses a wide range of social channels, and the different visualizations make it really easy to unpack and share findings, especially over long periods of time.”
- Brandwatch Consumer Intelligence Review, Alex I.
“One thing they need to improve is the speed at which the monitoring process runs. With faster processing, we will be on top of information and beat other brands for new content.”
- Brandwatch Consumer Intelligence Review, Zakiah A.
Be a bit more like Mr. Bond and use the best intelligence to complete your mission. Emerge as a market leader and harden your company against future competitive threats. Fortunately, you can do it without engaging in questionable affairs and sucking down stiff cocktails.
Competitive intelligence might have been taboo just a few years ago, but the truth is you can gain by studying your competitors. As more organizations embrace best practices and seek out competitive intelligence tools, remember that they are also trying to gain a competitive advantage over you.
Dominate the market with the right strategy and technology. Explore how G2 Market Intelligence needs to be a part of your complete arsenal.